Clearing the Bridge
by denise1
Summary: Sam confronts Conrad, or Conrad's ghost


Clearing the Bridge

By

Denise

Sam shot the woman a cautious glance, and seeing that she was still stunned, made her way over to the body lying on the floor.

Toast.

The colonel's terse pronouncement echoed in her ears. Even though she more than trusted O'Neill, she still felt the need to see it for herself. Her hand clutching her zat, she slowly rolled him over. A trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth, either from the symbiote leaving or from the gunshot wound. She couldn't know for sure.

His arms limply fell to his side and his navy jumpsuit was wet, drenched in his own blood. She could see the glossy hole in his chest, and smell the faint lingering aroma of gunpowder. He never stood a chance, she thought cynically. Someone, probably Simmons, had shot him at point blank range. He'd likely died instantly.

She looked at his face, staring into his sightless eyes. She remembered the last and first  time she'd actually seen him, back at the hospital. His eyes had been full of desperation then, as he'd sat in his wheelchair, begging for her understanding.

Go ahead. If I let you go, I'm dead anyway. Please Major Carter, if you put the gun down, there's a very good chance we can both live…I'm sorry about this, Major. But I've run out of options.

The human race has progressed to where we are today because of men who broke the rules and risked everything.

He'd risked everything all right…and ended up dead. She wondered if he'd thought it'd all been worth it in the end. Had an extra year of life been worth living that year a prisoner in his own body? A hostage to a vengeful alien that saw him as nothing, merely a place to live.

Maybe he saw himself as a visionary, a pioneer. She couldn't. What he'd done was no different then what Colonel Kennedy or Colonel Maybourne had wanted to do to Teal'c or to the Tollans. Conrad never saw her as a person, just a resource. One that he could exploit.

She wondered if he'd always been that way, or if his mortality had corrupted his morality.

She felt a bit of pity towards the man. The last year had to have been hellish, a double prisoner of both the NID and his very body.

But her pity couldn't overrule the feeling of satisfaction she felt as seeing him dead. So many times during the last year she'd had to look over her shoulder because of him. His greed and selfishness had ruined her peace of mind. She'd lost count of the sleepless nights, the occasions that she'd found herself staying on the base or fighting the urge to ask Teal'c if he'd like to come over.

A part of her had actually enjoyed knowing that he was in the NID's control. It served him right in so many ways. If her freedom had been destroyed, at least she could draw some solace in his being destroyed as well.

But none of it mattered now. Reaching out, she closed his eyes.

The sudden roar of decompression yanked her from her thoughts. She got to her feet, meeting the alarmed gaze of the brunette. "Stay," she ordered tersely and made her way to the doorway.

The push of the wind got stronger and she braced herself against the bulkhead. A few seconds later, the roar stopped and her ears popped with the sudden change in air pressure. "Colonel?" she called, holding the zat at the ready.

"Yeah. We're ok," he said, stepping into view. "Found Simmons," he quipped. Sam looked at the two men in the hall, her eyebrows raised in question.

"He is not longer an impediment," Teal'c said, his voice full of satisfaction.

"Went for a little walk," Jack explained. "The goa'uld was in him." They walked back onto the bridge. "Any more of your people running around?" he demanded of the woman.

"No," she said, sitting passively in the chair.

Jack nodded. "Teal'c. Why don't you go release the hostages? Take her with you," he ordered. "She gives you any grief, shoot her."

Teal'c nodded as the woman slowly got to her feet. They left the room as Jack paced, curiously studying the displays. "So, this thing actually flies?"

"Yeah. Although more than half of it isn't space worthy," she replied.

He shrugged. As long as you're in the half that works. "You know how to get us home?"

"The computer has all our star charts in it. So it shouldn't be a problem."

"Sweet." He sat down in the center chair running his hands up and down the arm rest. He started to fiddle with some of the buttons and switches.

Sam looked at him, then to the body on the floor. "Umm…"

"What, Carter?"

"What about him?" She pointed at the corpse.

"What about him?" Jack parroted back.

"Well, sir. We can't exactly just leave him here," she motioned around the bridge.

Jack frowned and got out of the chair, moving to stand over Conrad's corpse. "Yeah. I guess you're right. He would be a bit of an OSHA violation. What do you want to do?"

"Colonel?"

"If I remember right, he has…had no family, no one for us to send his body back to. I figure we can either toss him out an airlock, or secure him on an unfinished floor and take him back," Jack said, his distaste as turning part of his shiny new ship into a make-shift morgue, plain on his face.

Sam stared at the body and frowned. Spacing him seemed cruel, but it didn't have to be. It wasn't like he was going to feel it or anything. And if they waited until they were near a planet, they could release him and let gravity do the rest. He'd be pulled down into the atmosphere and go out in a literal blaze of glory. Heck, people did it on Earth, paying thousands to have some of their ashes shot into a decaying orbit. She remembered reading that Gene Roddenberry's ashes were circling the planet.

Then again, dragging him back to Earth had some appeal. They'd get home; the body would go to the morgue…and then probably vanish. Chances are it'd be whisked away to Area 51, probably where Doctors Heckle and Jeckle were sent after being arrested in Seattle.

They'd finally get their chance to study the brain of an ex-host and do to him what they'd wanted to do to her. He'd end up the lab rat in the project of his own creation. It'd be poetic justice in a way. And who knows, maybe great advancements could come from them studying Conrad. He could posthumously accomplish what he couldn't in life.

Impulsively she raised her zat, armed it and fired three times in quick succession, disintegrating Conrad into nothingness.

"Or there's option three," Jack quipped, raising his eyebrows and staring at the now empty piece of floor. Sam shrugged, disarming the zat and shoving it into her pocket. "I'm gonna go check on Teal'c, make sure he hasn't gotten lost or anything. You gonna be okay up here?" He gestured around the empty bridge.

"I'll be fine, sir. I'll see if I can plot a course home." She turned, headed towards the navigation console as he started to leave.

"Oh, Carter?" He turned back at the threshold. "Center seat's mine," he declared.

She chuckled slightly. "No problem, Colonel. But I don't do hailing frequencies."

Jack snapped his fingers. "And I was hoping for mini skirts and go-go boots," he tossed over his shoulder.

She shook her head, signing onto the computer. "And I was so looking forward to people taking their shirts off," she said softly, her fingers flying over the keyboard.

Fin


End file.
